The Central Bank of Lebanon has processed a total of $28 million in transactions on the Sayrafa foreign exchange platform this week, Central Bank Governor Riad Salameh announced on Friday.
“The Central Bank carried out sales of U.S. dollars to participating banks on the ‘Sayrafa’ platform at a price of 12,000 pounds per dollar,” Salameh said in a statement.
“The total transactions for this week are 28 million U.S. dollars, at a rate of 12,200 pounds per dollar,” he added.
Salameh had recently announced that the selling of U.S. dollars on the said platform would become daily starting Monday, June 21st, after having been conducted weekly since Sayrafa launched back in May.
He declared at the time that the exchange rate would remain fixed at 12,000 Lebanese pounds per U.S. dollar.
Notably, Salameh had also commented that the information registered by money changers on the platform was “incompatible with the reality as stipulated in the circular of the Banque du Liban to exchange institutions, which obliges money changers to register all buying and selling transactions on the platform.”
The registered sums, he said, were not commensurate with the size of the exchange institutions, deeming them “insignificant” and “insufficient to pay the expenses of the exchange companies,” adding that they warranted investigation.
